HOMESCHOOLING BEGINS WITH HOME
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My first season of personal growth—the elementary or grammar stage—paralleled my children’s.
Our souls—will, mind, and emotions—ruled, which made everyday living chaotic. We were: |
during this season, all the conflict in my relationships and circumstances yielded a renewed mind. |
- willful: non-evaluative, strong in will instead of strong in spirit.
Like my children, I too moaned and complained when things didn’t go the way I thought they should instead of evaluating the “why” behind the conflict.
- weak-minded: lacking discernment, searching for answers to change external circumstances instead of searching for truth to free internal bondage.
Like my children, I believed the way to the happy life I envisioned was to ask God to change what was going on around me instead of what was going on in me.
- emotional: discontent and dependent on self-sufficiency instead of dependent on the all-sufficient One.
Like my children, I struggled because I thought my immature way was the only way; I couldn’t accept correction about my self-ways without feeling personally attacked.
Conflicts abounded!
There was bickering, disobedience, pouting, outbursts, yelling, crying. And the children did these things too!
Help!
“Where are you, God, amidst all this conflict?” I wondered anxiously.
One morning at breakfast through tears, I prayed aloud before my children, “Help!”
The Answer?
The Lord answered that heartfelt one-word prayer beyond my expectations. Within a few days, through His Word, He revealed to me (I Kings 19:12) that His gentle Voice was speaking to me through all the conflict. Within these overwhelming relationships and circumstances, He Himself was beckoning me to seek Him and let Him change—(gulp!)—me!
Where was He? Right there with me, alongside me, in me!
If I wanted these conflicts resolved, I needed to—(gulp again)—grow up into Christ my Head (Ephesians 4:15). No more kicking and screaming; no more emotional outbursts. Through this one deeply life-changing revelation—grow up!—the Spirit of God set me on the path to renewing my mind.
He began my homeschooling education by training me, His struggling child, just as I was trying to train my struggling children.
Instead of depending on my self-sufficiency, I needed to depend on His all-sufficiency.
"My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in weakness."
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses,
so that Christ's power may rest on me.
~2 Corinthians 12:9
The application: a renewed mind.
I’d like to share with you two foundational principles I learned during this season of growth, which renewed my mind:
- Conflict has two purposes:
- to bump our hearts to reveal to us who we are (God already knows).
- to present us with opportunities to train our children as God is training us moms.
- to bump our hearts to reveal to us who we are (God already knows).
- I would be transformed by the renewing of my mind through changing my thinking…
- from “I’m a homeschooling mom” to “I’m a homeschooled mom.”
Instead of seeing myself as a homeschooling mom—teaching my children—I began to see myself as a homeschooled mom—taught by the Spirit of God. I would teach them what He was teaching me. What a burden lifted during this season of life!
- from “Homeschooling begins with school” to “Homeschooling begins with home.”
I needed to put the focus in these academic elementary years of my children’s lives upon the development of the tool of home, trusting by faith, with fear and trembling, that when relationships at home were functioning well, school would flourish in the later years.
- from “I’m a homeschooling mom” to “I’m a homeschooled mom.”
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Grace and Growing up
Let the Lord renew your mind about His love for you and His grace through your process of growth. Even though you are making many mistakes during this difficult season of external and internal conflict, |
Yes, my faith was also being developed—not faith in finding the right curriculum or methods for my homeschool but in finding the faithfulness of God in my home and my heart.
Even though I was still struggling a lot through this season, His all-sufficient grace for my process of growth encouraged me so much that I began to offer His grace to my own children as they were working through their issues.
Just as His grace drew my heart to Him, His grace-in-me drew my children’s hearts to me as well! I was not parenting or homeschooling perfectly (far from it!) (Philippians 3:12), but He was perfecting me in love (1 John 4:12)—maturing, completing—me by His grace while I developed the tool of home. I am still in process today.
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Continue with Season 2: A Revived Heart.
Additional articles related to the theme of Relationship:
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